Mathematical Methods For Physics (Advanced Book Classics) | 
 enlarge | Authors: H. W. Wyld, H.w. Wyld
Publisher: Westview Press
Category: Book
List Price: $75.00
Buy New: $40.00
You Save: $35.00 (47%)
New (13) Used (9) from $39.99
Rating:  3 reviews
Sales Rank: 893985
Media: Paperback
Edition: 2nd
Pages: 656
Number Of Items: 1
Shipping Weight (lbs): 2
Dimensions (in): 9.3 x 6.2 x 1.2
ISBN: 0738201251
Dewey Decimal Number: 530.15
EAN: 9780738201252
Publication Date: March 30, 1999
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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Product Description
This classic book helps students learn the basics in physics by bridging the gap between mathematics and the basic fundamental laws of physics. With supplemental material such as graphs and equations, Mathematical Methods for Physics creates a strong, solid anchor of learning. The text has three parts: Part I focuses on the use of special functions in solving the homogeneous partial differential equations of physics, and emphasizes applications to topics such as electrostatics, wave guides, and resonant cavities, vibrations of membranes, heat flow, potential flow in fluids, plane and spherical waves. Part II deals with the solution of inhomogeneous differential equations with particular emphasis on problems in electromagnetism, Green’s functions for Poisson’s equation, the wave equation and the diffusion equation, and the solution of integral equations by iteration, eigenfunction expansion and the Fredholm series. Finally, Part II explores complex variable techniques, including evalution of itegrals, dispersion relations, special functions in the complex plane, one-sided Fourier transforms, and Laplace transforms.
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| Customer Reviews:
 Excellent Summary of Relevant Mathematics August 15, 2006
Robert G. Brown (Duke University Physics Department)
4 out of 4 found this review helpful
Mathematical Methods for Physics, by H.W. Wyld (MMFP) is a very lovely, reasonably inexpensive review of the mathematics that underlies much of modern physics through the introductory graduate level, especially (elliptical) partial differential equations, complex variables and integral techniques, and special functions. The book is in lecture note style, which makes it compact and readable, compared to encyclopedic textbooks in mathematical physics such as Morse and Feshbach or Arfken, or (in a more mathematical vein) Hilbert and Courant that cover much of the same ground.
The book provides excellent support for graduate electrodynamics, graduate quantum mechanics, and related or similar courses with a high PDE content or intense usage of e.g. Green's functions, delta functions, Bessel (or other hypergeometric) functions, and sundry special functions or integrals. It omits any treatement (deliberately) of probability and statistics or actual applications from e.g. quantum field theory or truly advanced physics.
I have used this book personally for many years for many purposes -- to support research in multiple scattering theory, to teach graduate electrodynamics, to find quick and straightforward derivations of key e.g. Green's function relations or integral relations. Its derivational nature -- most of the lecture note style content is systematic derivation and exposition of the essential components of e.g. separation of variables and solution of the various resulting ODEs -- make it especially suitable as a deskside reference for physicist and student alike, or even as a textbook or auxiliary reference in a mathematical physics course.
MMFP is a classic, and while it was REALLY a bargain fifteen years ago at $16 (a typical price) it still isn't a bad deal priced in the $50's.
Good book for graduate students majoring in physics October 3, 2008
Liu Tianyu
This book emphasizes on the relation between different areas of physics by method of maths. Unlike other maths book I have used, it is easy to be learned by oneself and it can provide all the knowledge of maths using in physics so that when studying physics, you can concentrate on the physical idea instead of being trapped in solving maths problems.
 wonderful text that makes your eyes bleed July 26, 2008
Awake69 (Mississippi)
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
The reviewer who used the word "readable" to describe this text is crazy. :) It was apparently written and typset using a 1950's era manual typewriter. I think the author literally had his secretary type out his lecture notes or some such thing. This makes the text (and following the equations) very hard on the eyes. And, I'm sure that this poor typesetting has caused many people to look at this book and just pass it by.
That's a shame, because the content of this text is outstanding. If the publisher were to retypset it with a more readable font (and possibly update the figures though that would be nice but not necessary), this would be the best book in this field (graduate school level mathematical methods for physicists).
This book starts by showing that over and over, among many varied physical systems, the same types of equations show up again and again (diffusion equations, wave equations, etc...). The remainder of the book is devoted to methods of solving these equations and demonstrating their applications in diverse fields (electrodynamics, quantum theory, acoustics, etc...). The book continues with a fantastic generalization of the sturm liouville eigenvalue problem and in subsequent chapters begins to solve it for diverse situations leading to very complete descriptions of special functions and their applications (legendre polynomials and spherical harmonics, cylindrical and spherical bessels functions, and many more). This constitutes roughly the 1rst half of the book and basically would make for a fantastic 1 semester course of applied partial differential equations at the graduate level. The remainder of the book deals with diverse topics such as Green's function techniques, integral equations, and complex variables. The content of the book for all these topics is mathematically dense, yet lucid and understandable at every stage.
The book does lack some topics that would be useful (for example, there's no group theory presented in this text), but still it is a remarkably complete and self contained work.
I would make a few suggestions to the author/publisher:
1) Please typeset this book with a readable font. Really, how hard could it be? Just scan the text in with OCR, change the font and fix the equations). You would sell so many more copies!
2) In most of the chapters there is not a large selection of problems, and the problems that are there are all VERY challenging (especially in the first half of the book). I would add some additional problems, and include some lower level "confidence builder" type problems for students to solidify their understanding before tackling the more challenging problems.
3) The Green's function chapter is way too long. Break it into two chapters.
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